Jon Stewart Goes Off on GOP for Shutting Down the Government
The government may have shut down for the first time in 17 years, but Jon Stewart is staying put because his excoriation of House Republicans is essential.
On last night's Daily Show, Stewart let loose on the GOP for putting the brakes on the entire budget solely over the Affordable Care Act, "also known as Obamacare, also known as the end of America as we know it for reasons no one is able to clearly explain."
Stewart then proceeded to explain to Republican representatives, since they seem to have forgotten, exactly how government works:
Apparently, they are allowed to do that — [members of Congress] are allowed to make laws, and the President is allowed to sign laws. And what do we do if those laws are unconstitutional? Well apparently nine precogs in magic robes got together, looked at the Affordable Care Act, and decided that it was not unconstitutional.
So everything appears to have been done literally by the book. This bill is now a law, vetted by the very system these Republicans claim to love — but to hear Republicans tell it, the whole thing could just be avoided if President Obama would just meet him halfway!
The bill is a fucking law! Are you familiar with how the word works? Did you see the Giants game on Sunday? Okay: they lost 31 to 7. And you know what the Giants didn’t say after that game? 'If you don’t give us 25 more points by midnight on Monday, we are gonna shut down the NFL!'
Stewart saved some much-deserved ire for the media's coverage of the shutdown, pointing out that what we have here is "not a game of chicken" but "an asshole causing a head-on collision."
He then turned his attention one last time to Republicans to drive home "the degree to which [they] have left the plane of reason" by mocking their claim that Obama can negotiation with Russian and Iran but not with them:
You’re not helping yourself. If it turns out that President Barack Obama can make a deal with the most intransigent, hardline, unreasonable, totalitarian mullahs in the world, but not with Republicans, maybe he’s not the problem.
